Prioritizing National and Fiscal Risks in Bulgaria: An Expert-Based Assessment of Sovereign Resilience

National risks constitute an important but still underexplored dimension of sustainable development, particularly in countries exposed to institutional fragility, demographic decline, and geopolitical uncertainty. This study identifies and prioritizes the ten most significant risks facing Bulgaria’s development over the next decade, with particular attention to their fiscal and macro-financial transmission channels. The analysis is based on a structured expert survey conducted among 82 specialists from academia, business, research institutions, civil society, and public practice. Respondents assessed 32 poten-tial risks according to likelihood and impact using a five-point scale. The empirical framework combines descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha, the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin test, exploratory factor analysis, Spearman’s rank correlation, and the Kruskal–Wallis test. A combined priority index was constructed as the product of mean likelihood and mean impact scores. The results show that the most significant risks are concentrated around institutional and systemic vulnerabilities, especially distrust in the rule of law, ineffective healthcare, disinformation, corruption, crisis of statehood, demographic de-cline, and deterioration in education and infrastructure. The findings indicate that these risks affect Bulgaria’s long-term development through five main fiscal and mac-ro-financial channels: higher sovereign risk premia, expenditure pressure, weaker revenue capacity and investment efficiency, labor market deterioration, and broader financial fragility. The study contributes to the literature on sustainability governance, sovereign resilience, and fiscal sustainability by showing that national resilience de-pends not only on the management of external shocks, but also on the institutional ca-pacity of the state to absorb long-term structural pressures.